The database includes more than 300 videos from body cameras, dashboard cameras, and bystander videos, plus audio recordings from 911 calls and police radio transmissions. Much of the video and audio on the portal stems from cases that are years old, and all those cases are still under investigation.
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The move comes after the mayor and police department faced fierce criticism for previous resistance to releasing footage of a series of police shootings that were captured on city-owned cameras.
But as the city grapples with fixing decades-old problems in an attempt to regain trust, critics of Chicago police say if records are saved and analyzed, it could crack the code that strikes the balance of police accountability, transparency and public safety.
In February, the task force recommended that the city release videos of officer-involved shooting incidents to the public within 60 days of the incident, which Emanuel said he would work to ensure was “the rule” going forward.
At a news conference Friday, IPRA boss Sharon Fairley stressed that the videos do not paint a complete picture of what happened in each incident, and many lack context. The recordings include videos from police body cameras, patrol vehicle dashboard cameras, as well as audio from 911 calls.
The Chicago police union opposed the release, saying in many cases the videos don’t tell the full story.
BuzzFeed News will be updating this post throughout the day as the recordings are released. He said the “new policy strikes a better balance of ensuring transparency for the public while also ensuring any criminal or disciplinary investigations are not compromised”. The materials pertain to still-open investigations.
Friday’s release of these case files is the first major step in complying with that directive. “This new policy is one piece of a much larger effort to restore trust and fix relationships between law enforcement and our communities”. “Ideally, more basic information would be provided in the [index] list, including the location of incident, but this is an impressive effort”, he says.
And in a video from a year ago, an off-duty Chicago cop doubling as a security guard repeatedly punches a restaurant patron who refused to leave after closing time.
A third recording made from a cell phone camera outside a spontaneous block party on the city’s West Side shows an officer roughly throwing a woman against a squad auto and another police officer strike another man with a baton. “The inclusion of an incident on this website does not suggest a determination has been made regarding any police officer’s conduct”. Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor who runs the school’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic, helped release the Citizens Police Data Project last fall after spending 10 years suing to obtain the information. “I think this is a real step toward transparency”. IPRA is not required to list every case now under investigation.
Dean Angelo is president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Chicago Lodge #7.
“This is a significant change in the way these documents and videos have been treated”, Ed Yohnka, director of communications for the American Civil Liberties Union of IL, tells the Monitor in a phone interview.
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The release Friday in Chicago, though, offers a sprawling look into the details of individual cases and allegations, providing a larger glimpse into a universe of information previously withheld from the public. At one point, the officer in the video grabs Payne near the neck and wrestles him to the ground.
